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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Having spent the last few days dealing with the aftermath of turning 39, I’ve finally gotten the database rinsed and cleaned and full of genuine registrations again from the Great Birthday Giveaway… and with some cunning databasery I’ve managed to reinstate some previously disabled games. What does this mean for you?

In short: if you ordered more than one game, I have reactivated the first one you ordered.

So if you were one of the people that fired up Steam the other day and discovered your game(s) have vanished, or if you tried to obtain a Steam key and were told that your email has been disabled, or if you tried to register your Puppygames registration but were told the same, you may now again register your game – just the first one you ordered – and get a Steam key for it (if it was Revenge of the Titans or Titan Attacks – Droid Assault and Ultratron don’t have Steam keys yet, but they will have, and you will be able to get them in the same way).

All in all I’ve managed to give away a further 2,353 free games to people who either didn’t read the small print quite right or for whatever reason were unaware of the one game limit. This makes me feel all magnanimous and warm inside, and is back in the spirit of things, bringing the total grand giveaway to 13,701 games.

Just to allay a few untrue rumours circulating – no-one is going to be banned by Valve for blagging an extra key. There are a few script hackers who might be in trouble though, and it was these guys filling up the registrations database with shite that have caused everyone all the grief, you included.

71 thoughts on 'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished'

First, I would like to apologize as well. I was one of the people that took advantage of that. However, I didn’t see it on Twitter, but on a message board, to which they did not say anything about the 1 item limit. I don’t completely absolve myself, as I should have checked, to which I’m going to follow your twitter in case something like this happens again, so I’ll know the full thing.

I do wish, however, to know if it is still possible, for people that abused this chance, to be able to come back and buy your games.

Thank you for doing such things! You’re a great Linux-friendly developer, and for that I respect you. You also probably make the best retro games out of all.

I want to know just one thing: when is the next game coming? I’ve been waiting since 2010 for something new! When are we going to see a preview? A screenshot which doesn’t explain anything? A small part of a screenshot that’s just really confusing? A mockup at least? Please tell me at least one is coming soon!

I have to admit that I tried to get 3 different games and it was a really stupid thing to do. I’m sorry that I tried to take advantage of your kindness. I think it is amazing that you have let the people that did what they weren’t supposed to have one of the games they tried for! You really are a great person! Thank you very much!

Thanks, I think everyone is a winner this way.
I, for one, will pick every future puppy games game as soon as it released on Steam (sorry, big backlog here, Steam is how I keep track of it) and can’t recommend you and your games highly enough to my friends.

That’s extremely kind of you to give people games even after you’d been taken advantage of. I’m sure some people might honestly not have known, but I ‘ve personally seen more than a handful of people rip off every game they could, fully aware of the limit.

I am not here to be ultra nice because of your generosity, yeah it was a cool thing to do but you could have planned it better. If so many people stole from you thats your own fault I guess. I am really angry because I bought your two games ROTTand TA way before. I didnt even know about the giveaway until yesterday and a “Friend” said :hey I have this key of Revenge of the Titans, I gave him a Tradable copy of a 9.99 game.I wanted this game for my Girlfriend and yes It worked. She loved it !
But today morning she said the game was gone from her library. So I paid 9.99 for nothing. Thanks for blameing the wrong people and just randomly taking away games that cost some of us money. I didnt get nothing for free.I tried to get the game twice yesterday but it was jammed I didnt even get trough.So yeah nice way of making a scandal and getting your games to go viral your being the vict im.

We didn’t blame the wrong people. You were ripped off by a “friend”, plain and simple. The keys are specifically non-tradeable as well. I can’t say I’m particularly sorry about what happened to you. Wise up.

Ok ,
I guess your right. Well I am sorry cause I was kinda agressive to. You only meant to be nice by giving away games for free. To bad steam and the internet is full of A*******s that cheat and steal.

Someone did post an interesting comment in the Steam forums, lamenting about developers giving free keys away because exactly this happens. I was having a bit of trouble understanding but now you’ve turned up with a concrete example I see his point… I’ll have to think a bit more carefully next time I do something daft like this!

Anyway, sorry for being a little snappy there, we both got dicked over by someone. I’ve just registered you a free Revenge of the Titans to your hotmail account.

I hope you are doing fine. I have been checking my email since yesterday but havent received ROTT. I guess it didnt go trough or the servers are still trying to get back to normal. Well it will get trough eventually. Just wanted to let you know and thank you again for this generous Gift.
Have a great day Cas!

Wow man , thank you very much Cas! My Girlfriend will be very exited and do a backflip out of joy!!! She literally fell in love with your game Revenge of the Titans.I never expected this from you at all.
Ill be buying your future games once they come out on steam for sure.

Than you very very much Cas! Ill recommend your games with joy of saying that programmer is too nice!!

Today when I opened Steam and realized that Titan Attack was gone, I was quite suprised. Then I went to the forums and realized what happened. To be quite honest, I felt pretty bad all day long. I tried to get three of your games (I already had Revenge of Titans). It was a very bad thing to do, and I’m very very sorry. Also, I was very worried that my steam account was going to be banned or something. I event wanted to buy Titan Attack and your other games to somehow make up for my mistake. I certainly still intend to.

no words to describe how awesome are you. I still want to fulfill to my promise and I’ll buy one other game from you as soon as possible, just to say “thanks” for being a great developer and a great man. Happy birthday again.

I was one who got more than one. I now feel really bad for doing so. I wasn’t aware of the limit, but I still want to say that I am sincerely sorry for what I did. I feel like I ruined your birthday (Hopefully you still enjoyed your day). Thank you for compromising and once again, I am sorry.

I have not participated to that – already owning both the ultrabundle and revenge oif the titan. I am somehow ashamed by what have happened, especially the internet backlash. I hope that have not burned you too much.

Still, happy birthday !

(by the way, is there a way to keep trace of the financial situation of puppygames ? I toy with the idea of supporting you by buying one additional return of the titans, especially if times are dire for your society)

Hello,
I take 3 games. After the reset i can take the RotT. I download the drm free version/demo and pop the mail. Game say that I have the full game but after a shotdown game and open second time i have info that I must pop mail seconary. Game dont get full, only I get info that I have registered version and get mail with reset url. Steam key was added properly and works. I have that all the time.

Hi Jan, sorry about that – there’s a long-standing problem with our registration server where it seems to not like some international characters in names and addresses and things like that. I’ve fixed it for you now.

Thx for enabling the first game i ordered. I was also one of those ppl that took all 4 sry >_<. I should have maybe checked the original source first, but there where no mentions of just 1 game on the homepage itself so i oversaw it. And just being able to add one game to cart was not noticeable for me because i always order games one by one so that i have seperate receipts for each game i buy.
I even use different emails for different stuff for example my steam email is completely seperate from all stuff that i do so that only valve and the email service itself know of my e-mail account for my steam account for security reasons.

I already had Revenge of the Titans from the Indie Strategy Pack from last year (and also from one of the humble bundles) so i am pretty happy with the Titan Attacks key that i activated today for my steam account.

I hope this birthday giftaway wasnt so bad for u. Next time it could be helpfull to maybe use help for big giveaways like reddits bot which was succesfully used by the Faerie Solitaire and Lucid giveaways. Of course i know that not all of your games have activation keys so u couldnt make a take your pick giveaway with that but maybe
that is still another option.
A good next thing would also to mention restrictions nexttime on the homepage itself on not just on twitter because not every1 uses twitter or follows every single twitter from ppl.

Hello, I just wanted to tell you that I am deeply sorry for abusing the birthday boy givaway, I did not grab any Steam games, what I wanted was the DRM free Ultratron and Droid Assault. I admit to using different emails to get both games. But I promise you I will buy from you in the future to make up for what I did.

Again, I really am sorry I was one of the many who didn’t just take one like we were clearly told .

39… I remember 39. It was a good year. It’s inspiring to me to see you making small indie games at this age. I’ll be waiting to see the party you have for the big 4-0.

Nice of you to reactivate the game for those who got more than one. Wasn’t a problem for me, but I figure most of those whose greed got ahead of their knowledge didn’t mean anything bad. I might have done so myself if the post I saw about this (on Steam Gifts) didn’t mention it was for just one game.

Hi Cas. I already had written you an email but seems that you have tons of them so i decided to come here.
On giveaway when I had come site was already dead and I failed to pick up a game. I wanted Titan Attacks so much.
Do you still have some codes to give? Please and Happy Birthday

If using the stick to maneuver the cursor, yeah that sort of thing is nearly useless (can be replicated using xpadder, so I’ve done it in other games) and you’d rather want to switch to full analog control like Geometry Wars. If the issue is that it’s just hard to get instant precision with analog, you might want to play around with adjusting how wide the dead zone is. You need precise angles for aim in this sort of thing and obviously it’s much harder getting it right from the center of a circle. This wasn’t a concern in early arcade where there was only 8-way aim.

It’s all working nicely, with subtle dead-zone and perfect precision (if you’ve grown up with controllers; I admit I’ve never had one or owned a console either). It’s still a lot harder than the pinpoint instant accuracy that WASD+mouse-to-aim delivers. Just watch any FPS player with keyboard and mouse versus someone equipped with a controller.

Of course it’s not as extreme as that particular mismatch, and I think I’ve come up with a reasonable adjuster: using the controller gives you a 33% fire rate increase – which gives feedback a little sooner from the increased number of bullets spitting out.

sorry that trying to give everyone one free game didn’t work out so well for you. i already had revenge of the titans through humble bundle and enjoyed it so was excited to get a chance to try another of your games for free! droid assault looked the most interesting to me so i put in for that and got my confirmation e-mail. haven’t installed it yet as i have a long list of games i intend to play eventually when i have time — maybe it will be on steam by then.

i also wanted to say thanks for the updates i’ve already seen on revenge of the titans; specifically steam cloud and achievements. if you release anything co-op i’ll encourage my lan party friends to buy it.